Brutal Domesticity
November 20, 2023
THE HOUSEWIFE’S LAMENT
(from the diary of Mrs. Sara A. Price, written between 1850 and 1900)
One day I was walking, I heard a complaining,
I spied an old woman the picture of gloom.
She gazed at the mud on her doorstep, ’twas raining,
And this was her song as she wielded her broom.
O, life is a toil and love is a trouble,
Beauty will fade and riches will flee,
Pleasures, they dwindle and prices they double,
And nothing is as I would wish it to be.
There’s too much of worriment goes in a bonnet,
There’s too much of ironing goes in a shirt.
There’s nothing that pays for the time you waste on it,
There’s nothing that lasts us but trouble and dirt.
In March it is mud, it is slush in December,
The midsummer breezes are loaded with dust.
In fall the leaves litter, in muddy September
The wallpaper rots and the candlesticks rust.
O, life is a toil (etc.)
There’s worms in the cherries and slugs on the roses,
And ants in the sugar and mice in the pies.
The rubbish of spiders no mortal supposes
And ravaging roaches and damaging flies.
With grease and with grime from corner to center,
Forever at war and forever alert,
No rest for a day lest the enemy enter,
I spend my whole life in a struggle with dirt.
O, life is a toil (etc.)
Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever,
On a far little rock in the midst of the sea.
My one chance in life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me.
Alas, ’twas no dream, ahead I behold it,
I see I am helpless my fate to avert.
She laid down her broom, her apron she folded,
She laid down and died, and was buried in dirt.
